The General Knight Rider thread.

[Christopher]

I remember there was one show back in either the later '90s or early '00s that really took this to ridiculous extremes, but I can't remember what it was now.

Fringe had so many cases coincidentally relevant to the characters' lives that they actually lampshaded it in one episode as some kind of cosmic synergy or something.

It was also a staple of Lucifer. That show never explicitly tried to justify it, but since that was a series where God literally existed, I kind of figured that God was influencing events to expose Lucifer to situations that would affect his personal growth.

 

[DonIago]

I remember there was one show back in either the later '90s or early '00s that really took this to ridiculous extremes, but I can't remember what it was now.

Star Trek: The Next Generation?

 

[Christopher]

Star Trek: The Next Generation?

No, because that was an episodic show, not the kind of thing we're talking about where there's a serialized season-long arc, with the episodic cases of the week always coincidentally resonating with where the characters happen to be at that point in the arc.

 

[Skipper]

A little recap of the first episode (I skimmed it last night!)

The bad guys are a group of industrial spies (there are no more than 5 or 6 in total, but the important ones are 3). Their modus operandi is to infiltrate a company and then steal its secrets.

Michael Long (a cop) had been ordered to investigate, and he infiltrated the company targeted by this gang as a security guard. He and his partner caught the gang red-handed while stealing some secrets from (from the wiki) Consolidated Chemical.

But his partner is killed by the bad guys. Michael chases them into the desert. There he is betrayed by
Tanya Walker



He is left for dead, but is found by the Foundation who gives him a new face and identity and informs him that the gang is reusing the same modus operandi in Comtron.

(What I'm going to say is obviously a nerd's overanalysis, for an absolutely dumb series that doesn't even deserve this mental effort.)

As much as Michael should be grateful to the Foundation for saving his life, what the Foundation did actually harmed the investigation!

Michael Long was an eyewitness to the exchange of stolen information. He witnessed his own attempted murder. His testimony alone would have sent the entire gang to jail. But the Foundation prevented him from doing so by making the world believe that Michael Long was dead.

And the bad guys aren't the Mafia, or the mob, or Spectre. They're a handful of industrial spies. Michael Long didn't need any special protection from them.

Honestly, judging from the first episode alone, there was absolutely no practical reason for the identity change. Sure, it gave the Foundation the ability to have an agent without a past, convenient for field investigations. But nothing in the episode's plot "forced" the Foundation to let the world believe Michael Long was dead. In fact, Michael Knight was forced to start his investigation from scratch when the gang targeted Comtron to steal its secrets.